Romanesque England: Saint Andrew in Little Snoring
[Over the two weeks we spent in England at the beginning of May amid a whirlwind of feverish preparations for our daughter’s wedding, I managed to secure of few slots of free time to go and visit some of the very few churches still standing from what we would call in Continental Europe the Romanesque age, and which the English call “Norman”, as most of those churches were built around or after the Conquest in 1066. Anything that’s older, they call “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon”. Beginning today, I will take you on a tour of my lovely finds in the countryside of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.]
Little Snoring... The name itself is so appealing that I couldn’t resist! The church dedicated to Saint Andrew stands on a hilltop and is very notable for being one of only just two with a round tower fully detached from the church itself.
Archæologists believe that, while the tower is from the 11th century, the church we see today replaced an earlier one built on the same site. A lot of materials from the older church were also re-used to build the new one. The function of the tower was primarily to watch the environs, and its round shape was commanded by the difficulty of producing strong corners with the local pebbles and flint builders had to work with.
Most of this very simple church is from the 1100s, while the large Gothic windows are from the 1200s and 1300s, the oldest being the triple window in the eastern wall (what we in Europe would call “the apse”).
The northern wall, very plain and unadorned, retains traces of two doors, a Romanesque and a Gothic one.
Romanesque England: Saint Andrew in Little Snoring
[Over the two weeks we spent in England at the beginning of May amid a whirlwind of feverish preparations for our daughter’s wedding, I managed to secure of few slots of free time to go and visit some of the very few churches still standing from what we would call in Continental Europe the Romanesque age, and which the English call “Norman”, as most of those churches were built around or after the Conquest in 1066. Anything that’s older, they call “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon”. Beginning today, I will take you on a tour of my lovely finds in the countryside of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.]
Little Snoring... The name itself is so appealing that I couldn’t resist! The church dedicated to Saint Andrew stands on a hilltop and is very notable for being one of only just two with a round tower fully detached from the church itself.
Archæologists believe that, while the tower is from the 11th century, the church we see today replaced an earlier one built on the same site. A lot of materials from the older church were also re-used to build the new one. The function of the tower was primarily to watch the environs, and its round shape was commanded by the difficulty of producing strong corners with the local pebbles and flint builders had to work with.
Most of this very simple church is from the 1100s, while the large Gothic windows are from the 1200s and 1300s, the oldest being the triple window in the eastern wall (what we in Europe would call “the apse”).
The northern wall, very plain and unadorned, retains traces of two doors, a Romanesque and a Gothic one.